


Eddie Kaspbrak goes for a drive.

by failbender



Category: IT (2017), IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: 80s Music, Close POV, Eddie's pov, Excruciating detail to various interstates, Flashbacks, IT Chapter Two Spoilers, Lots of dialogue, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Road Trips, Slurs, Swearing, attempting to mimic Stephen King's writing style, book references or blatant ripoffs thereof, ensemble scenes because all Losers all the time, giving Stan and Mike things to actually do AHEM movie, so much swearing, un-beta'd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-04 21:07:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21204116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/failbender/pseuds/failbender
Summary: lib·er·at·ed, adjective; definition: Eddie Kaspbrak finally getting the fuck out of New York City.Or:Next time Eddie follows some cosmic pull to parts unknown, he should follow it to a fucking airport instead. Jeez.





	1. i.

**Author's Note:**

> me, reading IT last month: wow richie is my favorite character I really like him I bet he will be funny in the movie  
richie: *is funny*  
me: yay, great! can't wait to write him!  
me: *writes a fic entirely in Eddie's perspective instead*
> 
> Ok, so I think I kept the timeline pretty on the nose to what happens in the movie, with some minor variation and expansion of events. I wanted to try to mimic Stephen King's writing style from the book. Well, not entirely, because it doesn't take me five pages to describe the history of a gay bar, but I tried to frame the story similarly. Then again, I did write over 20,000 words so maybe I mimicked him too well. I’m so sorry.
> 
> For some reason, this is something I just could not help but write. The idea got into my head and kept fleshing itself out until I just went balls to the wall with it. I have no idea if it will be an enjoyable story lol but I did enjoy writing it.
> 
> Please let me know if you like it! Or if you find errors because I had no one to help proofread it! I love feedback!

Eddie has been awake for nearly thirty minutes.

The clock tells him as much, red lights angry in the darkness. 3:26, a terrible time of day, and he wishes even a part of him just wanted to throw the covers over his head and try to fall back to sleep. But there isn’t. He’s not in bed, he’s not under the covers. He does not plan to return to them either.

Eddie has been awake – wide awake – for nearly thirty minutes, pacing up and down the carpet runner over the wood paneling that makes up his bedroom floor. The movement is blessedly silent; always light on his feet. He didn’t think it would have mattered if he had tied bells to his ankles, though. At this point, he finds he wouldn’t give two shits about it if someone actually heard him.

Nearly thirty minutes, although maybe twenty of those had been aimless pacing, when he tried to talk himself out of whatever this feeling was. Or talk himself into going with it, this pulling, this heart-squeezing, stomach-twisting need to – to _go_. Eddie had practically jumped out of bed upon waking up with this feeling, convinced at first that he didn’t belong there, that he wasn’t home – but of course he _was_. His sheets, now made to damn-near military perfection. His light blue curtains, drifting in the summer breeze. His rugs safely spread across the room.

It is not the first time it has ever happened to him, this feeling of not belonging. Possibly not even the first time this week. But this happens to everyone, Eddie always tells himself, everyone experiences those funny moments when they first wake up and have no idea where they are.

He knows it’s not quite the same feeling. He’s being _pulled _somewhere, towards something. Pulled straight out of bed. Tugged right out.

His bed, his sheets, his curtains.

Eddie’s stomach rolls. He continues to pack.

He’s not bringing too much this time_ (‘this time,’ as though he often flees in the middle of the night)_, barely enough to fit the duffel. Clearly, he has the room to bring more, but he finds that he just doesn’t _care_ to. Six of the nearly thirty minutes pacing had been Eddie going back and forth from closet to bed. A full minute spent looking at his closet and having that same feeling twist around his heart.

None of this is mine, it tells him.

It’s stupid, really. Like, ridiculously fucking stupid, because he _bought _most of those clothes and happens to like them. There’s a nice white polo with varying colors of green striping at the top. He brings it. A long-sleeved, deep maroon sweater that is tempting to bring, but he doesn’t because it’s summer. There’s a light blue polo as well, and it’s plain but it’s extremely comfortable, why doesn’t he wear that on the drive there?

_(the drive where?)_

Another polo makes the bizarre choice of being a dark, wildly patterned blue with a black collar. Eddie doesn’t like that one, has no idea why he has it. For some reason, any time he looks at it he pictures a sweaty gigolo, maybe one who’s favorite sport is bowling.

It’s weird. So maybe Eddie doesn’t like _all _of his clothes, but they’re all still _his_. Presumably he even wore the gigolo shirt at one point. Maybe. The point is, this feeling is ridiculous; it’s a newer apartment, sure, but all the furniture is his, the clothes are his, all of it is his, all of it is home.

But he’s taken precious few of his favorite shirts, jackets, and some pants. He only owns one pair of jeans, so he takes those, too. He hasn’t really bothered to ask himself why he thinks he needs a duffel bag on this trip he apparently needs to take. But when he closes his closet door, he has a feeling he won’t be seeing the contents for some time, if ever again.

Any toiletries he wants to bring are thrown into the bag after a brisk shower. At first, he has his hands full with three different types of body wash before tossing two of them back into the sink with disgust. He doesn’t need to take gentle care of his skin; it’s not over sensitive or prone to hives or rashes or whatever the fuck his mother or Myra have been telling him most of his life, he knows that. He knows that _now_.

It is his third day without taking any of his medication. The world has yet to stop, and he has yet to self destruct, and that’s good enough for him. Whatever this pull is, it came with a strong sense of rebellion that he had experienced just about all week.

Determined, he tosses the body wash of choice into the duffel, along with deodorant, toothpaste (in a carefully sealed travel bag), only _one _of his shampoos, and his face wash.

He is halfway down the stairs when he runs back up, grabs one of the two body washes in the sink anyway.

Then the other bottle of shampoo. And a moisturizer.

So Eddie likes to be clean. Fucking sue him.

What he doesn’t take still sits inside the medicine cabinet. He had stared at the clear plastic, each pill visible and separated by the little compartments, each representing a different day. He usually takes three pills in the morning; one on an empty stomach, the two others after breakfast. Two afternoon pills. Four at night, with dinner. One before bed.

Monday and Tuesday’s containers are empty. Wednesday through Friday’s containers still have their pills inside, untouched. He has no plans to empty Saturday’s.

He shuts the cabinet, looks at himself in the mirror. Scrubs his hand down his face, pausing only to rub at his cheek a moment.

_You don’t need any of this_, he thinks, and eventually walks out of the house without even his inhaler for comfort. _You knew this when you were a kid. Remember? It’s bull shit. __Fuck all of it._

Around 4am, Eddie drops the duffel and his cell phone onto the passenger’s seat, not particularly bothered when the phone bounces off the seat and tumbles onto the floor. Who would call him at this hour? Who would call him, period?

Probably not even Myra, at this point. And if she did, he wouldn’t answer.

That and, well. Having a hands-free smart console spring to life with the engine turning makes the whole phone thing kind of redundant. The point still stands.

The console is left alone as Eddie pulls out onto a normally busy street. The GPS goes untouched. What would he enter? Eddie has no fucking clue where his destination actually is. He meanders through New York City, driving on complete instinct as he makes his way to the highway, because apparently, he’s going out of state. Wherever this feeling is tugging him towards, it’s not in the Big Apple. He thinks he probably already knew that, at the very least, but everything else is a complete mystery.

He has to go. Go _there_, wherever it is.

Eddie clenches his jaw. Somehow, he knows it’s going to be a long drive. A forever drive. Maybe he should have grabbed something to eat before shoving what little he could call a ‘life’ into a bag and blazing off towards the unknown. He will later, pick something up at a gas station or McDonald’s, even as his stomach turns at the idea of fast food. He never eats fast food, too unhealthy. But he doesn’t want to give a shit about what is unhealthy. This rebellion, this pull. If he wants a Sausage McMuffin, he will get a fucking Sausage McMuffin. It will be nothing like it looks on TV, it will be flat and greasy and unappealing and god damn delicious. He probably will stop eventually, on this trip to somewhere. Later.

Right now, Eddie Kaspbrak is going for a drive.

\--

So, turns out when someone has been driving for an hour and a half straight on an empty stomach, it doesn’t matter what they may have previously thought about fast food delicacies, they just need to devour them as quickly as humanly possible.

They also settle for Burger King if it’s closer.

At least, that’s why Eddie thinks this sandwich (croissant?) tastes as good as it does, and he does not happily _sigh _in relief (ecstasy?) after his first bite, but it’s a damn near thing. Sausage, egg, and cheese; his hash browns are pretty good, too. He wonders if forcing himself into cardiac arrest by eating more of this shit would be as great of a _fuck you _to his mother as he thinks it is.

His mother.

The drive so far has been silent, leaving Eddie to think. Mostly he has tried to figure out where the hell he was actually driving to, even as he took exits on auto-pilot, knew when to stay on which interstate for how long. The GPS was already a wash and he didn’t feel like listening to anything on the radio just yet. So the car has enjoyed a quiet passenger, unaware of the jumbled tirade going on in Eddie’s mind, thoughts piling on top of each other in a mess.

Visually, his mind is like a medicine cabinet.

Only this one has been violently shaken open. There are pill bottles and their caps tossed to the floor, multicolored pills lining the shelves like dead Christmas lights, ointments and bandages spilling out in ribbons. There is a large pill box, just like the one he left behind at home, except instead of the compartments being labeled as days, they are labeled _Richie,_ _Bill, Stanley, Ben, Beverly, Mike. _Even their contents have been scattered across the ground while the pill box gapes open. It’s a fucking mess.

But he knows he can think of his mother very clearly. The lone, opaque pill cannister still standing tall and fat, unmarred by the chaos around it. He can see it; he can see her.

He can see the way she would grip his wrist, _firmly_, when it was time to leave the park, even though he was the only kid who had to go home before sundown, because mosquito bites can lead to all sorts of illnesses, sweetie, have you forgotten? The way she would explain, _sadly_, to Mrs. Denbrough that her little Eddie couldn’t risk playing with Bill and Georgie in the snow, of _course_ not, he could so easily catch pneumonia. The way she had _screamed _at his gym teacher about how _delicate_ Eddie was, how he couldn’t possibly keep up with his _asthma_, and threatened to get the Board of Education involved if he wasn’t excused from further physical education classes.

The way she tutted, _venomously_, one time when an eight-year-old Richie turned up at his house, asking if Eddie wanted to see his new bike. Eddie had already been grabbing his fanny pack from the hall table when he heard his mother telling his friend that Eddie has been very sick all day with all the pollen in the air this time of year, come back another time. Richie may have even heard Eddie shouting in protest before the door slammed. Not shouting _at _his mother, of course not, just a sharp sound of dismay, or surprise, maybe even betrayal. But he wasn’t sick. Yeah, the pollen was annoying, but he felt fine. Could breathe fine. Why couldn’t he go see Richie’s bike?

“That bike is _much _too big for him,” she explained, her massive weight blocking him inside of the hallway where he could barely see the front door behind her. He wondered if Richie was still there. “He is such a careless little boy. He’s going to get himself killed.”

Eddie had no idea why his friend having a big bike meant _he _couldn’t go out. It wasn’t like _he_ was going to ride the stupid thing.

But he did. Rode double with Richie for the first time years later, fucking terrified and exhilarated the entire way.

He thinks it was after school one day – some time in March, or April; when the spring weather had yet to warm up, but damn if the sun didn’t try its best. It was definitely a Friday, school letting out excitedly for the weekend after an eternity of watching the minute hand click forward. Sixth grade.

Eddie remembers it pretty clearly now, actually, turning over the scene in his head like a snow globe. Or, more appropriately, plucking the medication off of the shelf and studying the words on the label. The warnings, side-effects, how many, what it was supposed to relieve. Except they read as memories, stories of his past. Action and dialogue that slot back into his head slowly but surely. Remembering.

_(pills collected and placed back into their compartments, one by one by one) _

Eddie remembers taking his third round of medication for the day with a small bottle of water, letting Richie crush the thing “with his bare haaaands!!” before tossing it into the trash. Bill stopping him in the hall on the way out the door, seeing if he wanted to sleep over that night. It was the weekend, after all, Stan and Richie were already on board, and they—

\--

“—w-were going to watch E.T.,” Bill explained, as if Eddie needed any more information other than the fact that everyone was sleeping over at Big Bill’s house. “Georgie’s never seen it b-b-be-be-before. Wanna come over?”

“Sure, that sounds fun,” Eddie replied easily. He would have to convince his mother to let him stay over, but his mom liked the Denbroughs. They were an easy family to like. She found them “positively wholesome”, so it should be no problem.

After debating for a moment internally, he looked up at Bill and hesitantly confessed, “I haven’t seen it before either.”

“_What?!_” Of course, this was Richie, who gaped just a second before setting a hand over his heart. “You’ve never seen E.T.?!”

Immediately on the defensive, Eddie set his jaw. “I was like, five when it came out, dickwad.”

“Georgie’s only six!” Richie’s arms flailed out before him, like evidence of Bill’s brother’s age had been presented at his feet. Eddie scowled, which only egged Richie on further. “You’re such a _baby_, Eds!”

“It’s a PG rated film, idiot, which means _Parental Guidance _required and that means it’s inappropriate for little kids for like swearing and violence and stuff.” He noticed Bill making a face. “Uh, except for Georgie, ‘cause we’re all watching it with him.”

“So your mommy wouldn’t let you?”

“Fuck off!”

“Edward James Kaspbrak, you kiss your mommy with that mouth?”

“Shut up, Richie!”

“‘Cause I know I would!”

“That doesn’t even make any sense!”

“Let’s get this show on the road, assholes,” Stan quipped sharply and that was the end of it. Stan was probably the only person in the world who could get Richie to shut his trash mouth. Eddie was intensely jealous of this sacred power.

They all started walking towards the school’s front doors, chatting away about how boring Mrs. Wagner is and how disgusting the pizza slices were at lunch today (not that Eddie, with his Mom-Approved-and-Prepared lunch, would know aside from how the slop looked). Stan zipping shut the pocket Eddie had accidentally left open on his backpack. Bill complaining about how much homework their math teacher had given them while Richie bemoaned how much “basic ass shit” the lesson had been. Standard Friday fare.

By the time they reached the bike racks, Richie was trying to sell the privilege of copying his homework to Bill, who seemed just desperate enough to take the bait. Eddie spared the two of them an eyeroll before walking sullenly past the boys unchaining their bikes.

“Eds, where’re you going?” asked Richie, his eyebrows furrowing above his thick glasses. Even Bill and Stan seemed confused.

“Aren’t you c-c-coming?”

“Well, yeah,” Eddie replied, dully. “My mom should be able to drop me off after I get home.”

Bill and Richie looked at each other, still perplexed. Eddie looked to Stan like he might know what the hell the problem was, but he was looking at Eddie just as awkwardly as before.

“That’s such a waste of time,” Richie whined, pushing his bike towards the sidewalk where Eddie stood. “You can blow your mom off for one afternoon. I’ll make up for it with her later.”

“Ugh, shut _up_, Richie.” Eddie gestured around himself. “Do you see my bike anywhere, numbnuts?”

_(It had been a very trying day when Sonia Kaspbrak yielded to her son’s request for a big boy’s bicycle, but she had only allowed him to circle the surrounding blocks - and not too far – and only with a helmet and pads.)_

“I’m not walking miles behind you guys. I’ll just get a ride once I’m home.”

“Just ride with me,” came Richie’s answer with a shrug. He immediately looked panicked for no reason Eddie could fathom, adjusting his glasses and stammering out, “Or Bill, you could ride double with Bill.”

Eddie gaped. “Like, two people on one bike?”

“Y-y-yeah, Georgie rides with me s-ss-sometimes.”

Eddie bristled at that; not because he disliked Bill’s brother, but because that was the second time someone has brought up how much better at being a kid Georgie was than Eddie. Or something. That’s what it felt like. Well, Georgie probably didn’t have _asthma_ and _allergies_ and _delicate bones_ like Eddie did.

“That sounds like a really great way to get myself killed,” he snapped.

“Actually, you’re small enough that you should be pretty safe,” Stan informed him casually. “As long as whoever’s pedaling isn’t a complete moron.”

Eddie snorted. “That leaves Richie out.”

“Yowza!”

“Hate to say it, but his bike is probably better for this,” continued Stan, looking like the words made him physically ill. He did not offer his own bike into the equation and no one pressured him to do so.

Eddie still did not look very happy with this information. “Why’s that?”

“His is b-b-bi-bigger,” Bill explained, looking down at his bike forlornly. It was still a kid bike. Just a month later, he would buy a new one and name it Silver, and Eddie would have sat much more comfortably on that. But that afternoon, Bill felt entirely inadequate.

Eddie could hear his mother screaming about this, all too perfectly. All the ways he could hurt himself, little things like scrapes or sprains all the way to, _you’ll fall and break a bone! Crack your head on the sidewalk! He’s likely to swerve into traffic and get you hit by a car!_

At the other boy’s obvious hesitation, Bill made a face like he wanted to swerve into traffic himself.

“It’s okay, Eddie,” he assured him, “you can catch up with us later. We’ll wait to ss-s-start the movie.”

Eddie grimaced. Feeling like he was somehow letting down Big Bill was the _worst_. He looked at Richie. “Have you ever done this before?”

“Duh.”

“_Richie!_”

“Okay, okay, yes, I’ve done it plenty of times before. I clearly lived to tell the tale, Eds.”

“Don’t call me that,” Eddie replied absently. He felt the fabric of his fanny pack beneath his fingers and realized he had reached down, likely to grab his inhaler out of the bag. It was not a conscious effort. He was unnerved by the action, like he was being mind-controlled. He stopped, letting it go, and glared at the seat of Richie’s bike.

_(“But I feel fine, Ma!”_ _The door slamming. Hallway blocked. The top windows of the front door beaming around her silhouette like prison bars. “I’m not sick!”)_

If Bill’s kid brother could do this, why the fuck couldn’t Eddie? People still rode bikes with asthma, or like, he was pretty sure. Even _Stanley Uris_ said it would be okay.

He stomped over to Richie, assertively grabbing the handlebars to make his point clear. “If you kill me on this thing, I’m gonna come back and haunt you for-fucking-_ever_.”

Richie seemed delighted. “Promise?”

“Shut up and show me what to do.”

Rolling his eyes behind his Coke-bottle glasses, Richie patted the seat. “You sit down and enjoy the ride. I do all the hard work.”

For some reason, Eddie thought it was going to be more complicated than that. That was better though. If he wasn’t the one pedaling, surely his asthma wouldn’t act up. He just had to sit there. It sounded so simple. Richie was standing up, feet planted on either side of the bike as Eddie got onto the seat behind him.

It was surprisingly awkward for a reason Eddie could not place. He was awfully close to Richie. Like, was this normal? Eddie looked to Bill for some confirmation that he had been somehow doing it wrong, but the other boy barely spared them a glance as he got on his own bike. Stan didn’t look any different, either, passively watching the two of them like he was waiting for something.

Well, he probably was. Waiting to hurry up and get to Bill’s already.

“Keep your legs out, like, away from the pedals. And hold onto my backpack,” Richie instructed, not looking behind him until he felt Eddie do as he was told. If Eddie didn’t know any better, he would guess that Richie was pretty uncomfortable with the whole thing as well. This had to be weird for him, too, right?

The thought vanished as Richie put one foot down on a pedal and finally grinned over his shoulder to the smaller boy behind him. Evidently, not feeling weird. “Ready, Spaghetti?”

Not wanting to lose his nerve, Eddie tugged hard on the shoulder straps. “Hurry up and go already!”

The movement was thoroughly strange, the world shifting around Eddie without any input from him. He was so totally focused on keeping his legs out of the way that before he knew it, they had already long since left school grounds. He saw that the bicycle caravan had collectively swerved off-road. A shortcut to Bill’s, Eddie knew, but it was a lot different on a bike than merely cutting through on foot. For some reason, he had anticipated flat sidewalks and safe crosswalks. But this was all grass and uneven dirt beneath the wheels. He could feel himself bouncing. Eddie gripped Richie’s backpack so tight he thought he might tear the damn thing right off.

This was terrifying.

He felt like he was going to fall off the bike any moment now, topple them both over and crack both of their heads. The thought absolutely chilled him. Why hadn’t he worried about Richie getting hurt before? What if the extra weight threw off his rhythm? What if he exhausted himself pedaling while standing like that? What if Eddie’s feet got in the way? What if the straps on his backpack broke? Why didn’t Eddie argue harder, tell them that his mom was right, that she’s just trying to keep him safe, this was a terrible idea, and he had _no control over the bicycle_—

“Hold on, Eds!” Richie exclaimed, as though Eddie wasn’t already, and the smaller boy realized they were about to go down a hill. Panic seized his heart in an instant.

“Rich, wait, no— _shit!!” _

They may as well have been dropping off into the Grand Canyon at seventy miles per hour. Eddie’s stomach was in his throat and his heart had most certainly stopped. _You’ll get yourself killed! _echoed over and over again, and he could all too easily imagine himself slipping from the bike, up away from the seat, losing his grip on the straps of Richie’s bag. Richie still pedaling away beneath him.

He could see himself float frozen in the air, fingers fruitlessly reaching for anything to grab onto as the bike dropped from him, down the hill. Canyon. While he soared to his death. The feeling seemed to drag on, leaving him terrified and suspended in mid-air like in slow motion. The only reason he kept his eyes open was to see, with clarity, with horror, his final moments on this sweet green earth.

And then the path leveled out.

Richie’s shoulders were solid and firm under his white-knuckled fingers while Eddie felt his insides settle back down where they were supposed to be. He was silent, dumbstruck. Not dead. Nothing broken, nothing cracked.

Completely unphased, Richie pedaled onward. Moments after the trail flattened, they went down another hill, much smaller and far less steep, and Eddie couldn’t help but giggle at the sensation. It was as though his stomach bounced right along with them and it was actually kind of – well, it felt funny as hell. He still could not bring himself to let go of Richie’s shoulders, but at least it no longer seemed as though any of his organs would try to escape up his throat anymore.

He could breathe.

It was really easy to breathe, he was surprised to find, big gulping, excited breaths that filled his lungs as they blazed down the path. Having someone tangible beneath his hands helped ground him, because Richie would never let him get hurt. Neither would Bill or Stan. His mother’s shrill voice faded away; these were his friends and there was nothing in the world that could harm them. They were immortal. Eddie, for fucking once and for what felt like the first time fucking ever, just enjoyed the ride.

The rest of the journey went on without incident and likely took about ten minutes all told. Eddie felt the elation of his survival buzz through him all the same.

When they pulled up to Bill’s house and Eddie was finally able to put his feet back on solid ground, he admittedly felt a little quaky at the sudden change, but not… not bad. It was a bit like the first time he had been daring enough to jump off of a swing mid-air, and realized that he had survived the leap. _Again, _a childish voice cried in his mind, _let’s do that again! _His heart still crashed against his ribcage, but he didn’t think it was out of fear. The inhaler stayed tucked away in his fanny pack, and he playfully shoved Richie’s shoulder on the way inside the house.

“Learn to drive, asshole.”

“Aw, come now, old boy!” Richie and his awful British accent. It would not get any better for quite some time. “I dare say you are much too cute for your brains to get splattered all over the pavement!”

“Ew, what the fuck?!”

The four boys piled onto the large couch in the Denbrough living room (after quick calls to the Kaspbrak and Uris households), with Georgie hopping on Bill’s lap without a second thought. Eddie sat between Richie and Stan. Evidently the latter had decided he did not want to suffer through an entire movie with Trashmouth next to him, and it was with a rather dramatic sigh that Eddie resigned himself to the torture instead.

Luckily, he was able to enjoy the movie anyway. Richie was probably keeping quiet(er) for Georgie’s sake more than Eddie’s – evidence by the occasional poke to his side, lean on his shoulder. How he swung his leg over Eddie’s at one point. Likely Richie forgot that this was _his_ first time seeing the movie, too, though Eddie wound up not missing any of the really good parts. Georgie gasped and giggled conspiratorially every time one of the kids on screen swore.

But Richie damn near howled at the bike scene, pointing at the screen as though they would be looking at any place else.

“That’s Eddie! On the bike!”

“Oh, shut up,” Eddie snapped back over the snickering, “He’s in the front and there’s a basket, it’s not the same at all!”

“We could get you one,” offered Stanley, and Richie practically choked, cackling wildly.

In spite of himself, Eddie slowly smiled and couldn’t help cracking up shortly after. The resemblance _was _pretty funny, and Stan’s deadpan suggestion just about killed Richie. Georgie joined in the round of laughter, not really understanding what the joke was but wanting to be included anyway. The swell of the music on screen as the bikes soared magically into the air captured the boys’ attention once again and they all fell silent to enjoy the rest of the movie.

Overall, it was a lot of fun, although the three of them had to endure Richie’s E.T. impression for the rest of the night. He kept rasping with the same inflection, “Ed_die_, phone hoooome!” Stan had trouble deciding just what he would do if he found an alien in his closet because it might not be worth the trouble. Bill and Georgie kept doing the finger thing back and forth with each other as Bill’s dad made enough hot dogs for everyone. They ate them with chips until they were absolutely stuffed, sprawled all over the living room and completely satisfied with life.

In seven months, Georgie would meet Pennywise in a storm drain and never return home.

But for that moment, Eddie enjoyed himself. He may have dutifully taken his medication as soon as his watch went off around dinner, but he found there was no need for his inhaler a single time the entire night.

It was easy to convince his mother to let him take his own bike to school after that.

No helmet, but what she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So I realized that not everyone is a crazy person and can read 20k words in a single sitting. I decided to split the story into a few chapters to give y'all some breathing room. Wish I had thought about it sooner tbh fffff
> 
> But a note: originally this work was one big chapter. That means the comments below may contain spoilers for the rest of the fic. Please don't read them!!


	2. ii.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: For those who have previously finished this fic, sorry, this isn't really chapter two :b I decided to split the story up to make it easier to read. I wish I had thought of it sooner tbh. hopefully it doesn't kill the dramatic tension aahahahahHAahahacries
> 
> anyway, in this house we give stan and mike things to do

Staring at the pathetic squirt of ketchup remaining on the packaging of his Burger King hash browns, Eddie smiles to himself. The excitement he felt on the back of that bike, just going on the bike in the first place, had been one of his first real rebellions. The first time he realized that maybe not everything would kill him. He’s kind of surprised he didn’t realize the truth sooner about his asthma. About the dozen other things his mother had told him was wrong with his body, or what could have happened to it in the vast, dangerous Away From The House.

He figured some part of him knew; he likely would not have been out with the Losers nearly as often if he didn’t. According to his mother, every other bush in the Barrens could set off his allergies. Give him a rash. Or "worse", she told him, but never explained what that could have been. Eddie would run through them regardless, playing tag or shooting his friends with water guns. He felt no sicker afterward, found no markings on his skin. He had shared root beer floats with Richie or Bill constantly. He had jumped into the river every time, stripped to his underwear, and pushed aside all the creatures and litter and _outside_ murking the waters.

Gone into the sewers.

The packaging makes a satisfying crunching noise as Eddie scoops up his trash, tossing it into the bin. The only other patrons in the Burger King at this hour is a mother, father, and their obviously very tired little girl. She has a little blue backpack around her slumped shoulders with Finding Nemo characters on it. The surfer turtle waves happily at Eddie as he heads over to the men’s room. They must be on a road trip as well, because Eddie can think of no other reason for a family to be in a Burger King before 6am. It’s sad to think that this is the best they could come up with for breakfast. Sad that he is guilty of the same thing. 

He washes his hands, does his business, and then washes his hands again before being satisfied enough to get back out to his car, as well as to the sanitizer leaning inside of the cup holder. He may have thrown in full stop with the fast food thing but he isn’t a _barbarian._

Eddie hadn’t been stopped for very long. The clock on the dash reads 5:57 when he pulls back onto I-95 and he figures he’s making pretty good time. Not that he has any idea if he needs to be Wherever City at any particular time. He probably could have waited to leave, taken a longer shower and eaten a healthy breakfast at home, but he knows there was really no way he could have put up with being in that apartment any longer. His skin was crawling by the time he had gotten out to the garage. Eddie didn’t _belong_ there.

He looks down at his bare left hand, then back up. Passes a trailer on his right. The rest of the road is just about empty.

This is going to be a fairly uneventful drive, he realizes, knocking his head back slightly into the headrest. That sleepy Burger King will probably be the most exciting place he stops at, unless there’s a gigantic motorcycle gang at the next gas station setting things on fire or something.

_Yeah,_ he thinks, rolling his eyes. _I’m sure all the Hell’s Angels get up at 6am to enjoy the sunrise._ He is not even entirely sure why his mind went with biker gang as a “scary exciting thing that could happen to you on your weird ass road trip” in the first place.

Being left to his thoughts had been fine before, in the dark hours of the morning, but Eddie has no reason to believe that the drive will be any more complicated now that he has made it out of New York. He has almost barely paid attention to which routes and exits he takes, following the pull and acting on instinct. But the point is, sunlight is slowly waking the world around him and he does not want to sit in silence the _entire _drive so he reaches over to the console.

Myra had set the stations at some point, he thinks, but it hardly matters because the stations in New York City are not the same as in southern Connecticut. Ugly static spits out from the speakers in an instant. He swears and immediately turns down the volume before idly tapping his finger on the tuner lit up on the console.

He passes a few commercials. A station playing Light Music™, one playing the tail end of some loud pop song, someone reporting the weather (“clear and sunny all weekend!”). He’s just about to click back to the Light Music™ when he finds a station touting _the 80s, 90s, and more! _and figures he may as well bite the bullet and go absolutely ham on this whole nostalgia trip.

A mixture of different bands and singers serenade him through most of the state, leaving him to determine that the station is heavily leaning towards the _and more! _side of the slogan. It’s not exactly the reminiscent high he had been looking for, but also really isn’t a bad thing. He had turned the radio on for background noise in the first place, and this works well enough.

The station does keep its promise when Bruce Springsteen comes on, singing about dancing in the dark. Eddie turns up the volume and belts out every word in the comfort of his own vehicle, where no one can see him, as he drives a very safe 63mph down the interstate. Wildly, he thinks he could slap his picture next to the word “liberated” in the dictionary. lib·er·at·ed, _adjective;_ definition: Eddie Kaspbrak finally getting the fuck out of New York City.

He remembers loving this song as a kid. It’s hilariously appropriate as well, he thinks. Not just for the car ride, but for the past thirty-some-odd years he’s been wasting away, _gettin’ nowhere_, _just livin’ in a dump like this_.

_There’s somethin’ happenin’ somewhere_

_Baby, I just know that there is_

The pull. The unknown destination.

_You can’t start a fire_

_You can’t start a_

\--

_fire without a spark_

_This gun’s for hire_

_Even if we’re just dancin’ in the dark_

Ben brought his mom’s old transistor radio down into the clubhouse and by some miracle the Losers could actually pick up some stations with the thing. Stanley owned a portable cassette player that he usually brought to Loser outings, but he was not at all comfortable leaving it underground in the dusty clubhouse. No one really blamed him. Richie kept talking about how he was going to save up for a boom box but the arcade and seeing Ghostbusters II twice had set him back quite a bit, and he had run out of lawns to mow. So for now, the radio would be enough, crackling through the likes of Aerosmith, Fine Young Cannibals, Madonna, Chicago. New Kids on the Block, to Ben and Bev’s delight.

In fact, Ben was at the clubhouse that day with Eddie, the former pouring over his history books and the latter catching up with the last three issues of _The Uncanny X-Men_. Mike, Stanley, and Richie were free that day and were bound to arrive at any moment, while Bill was attending some speech class that everyone knew he hated and helped him absolutely none. Beverly’s aunt was visiting for the weekend, which was a rare, happy occasion in the Marsh household, but she said she might see them later regardless.

The silence between the newer friends was comfortable, occasionally punctuated by Eddie groaning about the confusion of “everything with Jean Grey” and Ben tilting blueprints of the Derry library toward the hammock where Eddie could lean over and see. He did not quite feel the same admiration for the windowed hallway connecting the children’s section of the library to the adult’s, but it was sort of cool to learn about something he had never even really thought about before.

_(they had no idea that they had one very important thing in common: overbearing mothers)_

Plus, it was fun to hear someone talk about their interests, the ones they’re really passionate about. Especially Ben. Mike was the newest addition to the Losers Club at that point, but Ben was still figuring the lot of them out, and was quiet more often than not. So, it was great to hear him explain the differences in architecture and how long it had taken to build the Capitol and Town Hall. The structural integrity of the middle school. How he had built the secret base that he welcomed them to without hesitation. There was nothing Eddie could think of that he liked nearly as much himself.

At one point, Ben asked him if he thought any of the others would care about this stuff and Eddie figured Stan probably would be. Richie was stupidly good at math without even trying, so maybe he’d like the technical aspect of it. Bill would be kind enough to listen regardless.

“… Do you think Beverly would?” came the real question, and all Eddie could do was shrug.

Eddie felt no real attraction to Bev. Not like _that._ She was very beautiful, he could say that in a heartbeat, but he never for a second had any interest in doing anything with that information. Even if he did, he would have to get in line behind Bill and Ben, maybe Richie. Even Stan had been looking that day, so there was just no _point_. He was happy to have her around and grateful that she seemed to enjoy his company, but not particularly bothered if she did not seek him out specifically. Besides, Richie was in his face just about all day, all the time. She would probably have to get in line, too.

There was a clamor above them that had them both sitting up straight. They immediately got quiet, Ben scrambling over quickly to reach the radio and turn it off. Eddie heard the boy swallow thickly and knew they were thinking about the exact same terrible thing: Bowers. Bowers and his stupid friends _could never _find out about this place. Their lives would be fucking over and he would probably leave the bodies right there, underground, where no one would ever find them.

The trap door flew open.

Down came Mike, Richie, and Stan all at once in a loud frenzy, shouting over each other. Stan was crying. Upon realizing it, Eddie jumped out of the hammock to comfort the other boy and noticed Richie had a bloody, dirty scrape on his knee. His face was bizarrely pale. Mike was sweating and looked more terrified than Eddie had ever seen him.

The sight of the three of them so utterly wrecked had Eddie’s heart jumping up his throat. Thankfully, Ben was aware enough to remember to shut the trap door behind the lot of them as they guided Stan to the hammock, let him sit as he heaved in deep breaths.

“What the fuck happened?!” Eddie whirled on Richie, shocked when he actually _jumped _at the accusatory tone in his voice.

“It was—” but he stopped, staring at Stan and evidently unsure on how to proceed.

“Bowers?” Ben suggested wearily. Mike shook his head, setting his jaw.

“No. It was— it was the clown.”

The clown.

_What are you looking for, Eddiiiiiiie? _The boy immediately dug into his fanny pack to rip out his inhaler and take a large gulp. He saw the diseased face of the hobo behind his eyelids and sank shakily to the floor to sit. A second inhale accompanied the movement.

“That was no fucking clown!” Richie yelled, finding his words once again. He walked away from the hammock, opening and closing his hands like he needed something to do with them. Eddie stared at the blood on his knee as the other boy continued to feverishly pace. “That thing was as much a clown as I am Henry fucking Bowers!”

“It shows up looking like things we’re scared of, remember?” This was Mike. Eddie could barely focus on him, just a blurry shape around his panic.

“Who the fuck is scared of birds?”

“I know I’m scared of a three hundred pound one!”

What the fuck did he mean by that? Richie let out a bark of frustration that sounded a lot like the words “total” and “bull” and “shit” and resumed his pacing.

“We were at the old Ironworks,” Mike explained. His hand squeezed around one of the wooden poles the hammock was tied to as though he needed to keep balance. He looked at Ben. “You said there was some kind of explosion there? Killed a bunch of kids somehow?”

Ben seemed uncomfortable at the recollection, or maybe the attention. “Y-yeah, it was this big Easter celebration. There were dozens of families there collecting eggs and stuff. The explosion killed so many of them…” He shook his head sadly. “Over a hundred people died.”

Stan groaned involuntarily, but he had stopped crying. He had nothing to add to the explanation.

“I think the clown… It probably caused the explosion somehow,” Ben finished. Mike nodded quickly.

“Yeah. Yeah, we went to check out the place to see if there was an easy access to the sewers. So we could cut It off or something. But there was this huge smokestack that collapsed on its side during the explosion, I guess, and…”

He looked over at Richie, who had finally stopped pacing. He let his arms flap once at his sides.

“We thought we heard someone inside.”

“We should know better by now,” Stan snapped his head up. “Beverly said _she _heard voices from her sink before it tried to pull her in. There’s no one down there, there’s never going to be.”

“Yeah, well, someone could have been hurt in there,” Mike argued immediately. Eddie thought of Bill, thought of Georgie. Betty Ripsom’s shoe. His inhaler made another soft gasping sound in the otherwise quiet room.

“Anyway, we go in and there’s nothing,” continued Richie. “Nobody there. The thing was like, half-buried so there’s just a dead end in the back and all these stupid tiles everywhere, and then we…” He stammered a moment. “Then the – the entrance got dark.”

“It was this huge bird.” Mike’s arms raised out to his sides to accompany the explanation. “Gigantic, all black, and it was just standing there at the opening of the smokestack. But then Its mouth open and had this huge… tongue, but it was covered in red puff things.”

Red pom-poms dotting a silver costume. _“If you lived here, you’d be home right now.” _A slow, sick smile, drooling. _“Come join the clown, Eds.”_ An arrangement of balloons. _“You’ll float down here.”_

A shiver wracked through Eddie’s entire body. He felt light-headed.

“It was screaming at us,” said Stan, muted. “We were trapped.”

No one spoke. Eddie could do nothing but stare at Richie’s terrified face, wondering why he, of all people, wasn’t saying anything. He always had something to say. Always. Even if it was wildly inappropriate. Why not now? Why wasn’t he saying anything? Why—

“Well, what happened?” Ben asked simply. “You guys are fine now.”

The three who went to the Kitchener Ironworks exchanged glances. The truth of their survival had yet to even occur to them. The bird-clown had not killed them. All three of them made it out of there alive. They had lived. They _lived_. They escaped. They were there with their friends again, telling the story. They had…

“Rock war,” Richie piped up with a hesitant smile, which Mike returned after a moment. He shrugged as if to say, “if the shoe fits.”

Something in the air changed.

“Mike and I started grabbing shit off the ground,” Richie finally came back into himself, gesturing excitedly and just about shouting the story, “like rocks and those tiles, and we just threw those mother fuckers straight at that mother fucker!”

“I thought It was going to attack us,” Mike sighed, like he was recounting a distant memory instead of something that had just happened. “But I don’t think— I don’t think It knew what to do. I don’t think anyone’s ever fought back before.”

This time, all of the Losers looked around at each other. The importance of that notion would stay with them for quite some time, buried and nestled underneath their fear like a seed.

“So, It just… flew away?” Ben questioned, in awe. Eddie still could not bring himself to speak.

“No! And that’s the best part!” exclaimed Richie wildly. He beamed at Stan, who returned the attention with an indescribable look on his face. “Bird brain here saved our fucking bacons!”

That got Stan working. He sighed, looking exasperated. “‘Bird brain’ means something entirely different and_ certainly_ doesn’t apply to me.”

“Whatever! I will never make fun of your weird ass hobby again!”

That would turn out to be a lie, but everyone looked over at Stan for some explanation. He swallowed, staring at the heels of his sneakers as they dragged back and forth with the movement of the hammock.

“Richie asked me what type of bird It was. But It wasn’t.” He struggled to explain for a moment, before settling on, “It wasn’t a bird that existed.”

Ben stared. “Huh?”

“He was listing off all these different types of birds. Things It couldn’t be,” said Mike. He used his fingers to count in succession with the breeds. “Couldn’t be a crow, couldn’t be a raven, couldn’t be a blackbird…”

“Couldn’t be a magpie, or cowbird, or starling,” Stan continued automatically. Mike nodded.

“I think that hurt It, too. More than the rocks and stuff, because It kinda…”

_(The “bird’s” talons had lost their footing. They scraped along the dirt for purchase, scrambling backwards and reeling at the shouted, insistent denial of the form It had taken. And the _prick, prick, prick_ little hurts of the rocks and shard tiles being thrown unceremoniously at Its face._

Never this,_ It had thought, feral and angry. It had no word to describe “pain” because It had only ever inflicted, had not once felt such a thing before._

_But the boys knew none of this.)_

“… backed off,” Mike finished, unsure how to describe the panicked movement of the not-bird. “The thing flew away and we ran for the entrance as fast as we could.”

“It was still up there,” Stan corrected. He still looked extremely uncomfortable. “It was in the air when we got out.”

“Yeah, so we hightailed it here.”

“Thing was too fucking big to follow us through the Barrens,” Richie laughed. He was finally starting to look like himself again. “How stupid is that? Defeated by trees! It was incredible! We totally kicked Its ass!”

He looked at Stan, breathless, before clapping a hand on his shoulder. “Stan the man. You saved our lives, dude! You were so fucking amazing—”

“No, I was fucking terrified!” shouted Stan as he rose to his feet, slapping Richie’s hand away and stunning them all back into silence. That awful, horrified look flickered onto Richie’s face once again.

“I didn’t want to go there in the first place! I don’t want anything to do with this and I—” Stan stopped suddenly, like something was caught in his throat. Something like barbed wire. Resolutely staring at the floor, he managed to say, “I’m going home,” before pushing past them and their protests to do just that.

“I’ll follow him,” said Mike after the trap door had slammed back down, already heading over. “He’s just scared and— he’ll come around. But someone should make sure he gets home okay.”

That “someone” should have been Eddie going with Stan. Maybe should have been Richie. They had been his friends the longest and they needed to be there for him. Eddie knew this, but still couldn’t move. A walking disease, a drooling clown, burnt hands, a giant bird. Georgie with a cracked, decaying face. The whiplash of hearing their incredible triumph before it crashed back down to remind them that they were just a bunch of kids. Terrified kids. Against that _thing_.

Richie looked like someone had slapped him in the face. It was quiet for full minutes before he just about collapsed next to Eddie. Nearly collapsed _into _Eddie, in truth, his forehead coming to rest on Eddie’s shoulder. His glasses dug in at an odd angle.

Eddie reached up and clung to the back of his t-shirt as if for dear life.

“You guys did escape,” said Ben quietly. Guiltily, Eddie had forgotten he was there. The heavier boy looked down at his hands for a moment, unsure, before going on. “We really need to let Bill know what happened. How you guys got out. And I think what Stan did was very brave. All of you were very brave.”

Richie looked behind him to where Ben was. Maybe he had forgotten about him, too. Maybe he didn’t believe him.

“Yeah,” it was the first thing Eddie had said since they began their story. He had to swallow past his dry throat to continue. “I think so, too.”

Ben smiled. Richie had turned back to Eddie but the smaller boy was already looking away, honing in on something that had been bothering him the entire time. He let go of Richie’s shirt and sat up a little straighter, reaching for his nearby bottle of water and into his fanny pack.

“Your knee is all messed up,” he explained, pulling out some gauze, a few cotton balls, a tube of Bacitracin, and a few band-aids. Most of it was leftover stuff from when Ben had gotten hurt. “What happened?”

“Fell.” Richie waved his hand a little. “Like, right before we got here, too. Stupid.”

“Yeah, I guess you are.” When he touched Richie’s knee with one of the wet cotton balls, the other boy immediately flinched away. Eddie tutted, “Don’t be such a baby,” and continued cleaning the wound. It wasn’t large or deep or anything, but there was dirt mixed in with the blood and it really must have stung like hell. Scrapes like that, it didn’t matter who you were, or how tough you thought you were, because they always _burned._

It was quiet as he tended to Richie.

Eventually, Eddie heard the slow _slip _of turning pages every so often and realized Ben had returned to one of his books. The binding told him it was the one about Derry’s foul history. Likely Ben was trying to find more information about the Ironworks, for anything he could maybe wield against It in the future. Eddie wasn’t sure what he could possibly find.

Maybe he was trying to give them some privacy.

By the time Eddie secured a band-aid onto Richie’s skin, the latter seemed to be becoming himself again. “Thanks Dr. K. You think your mom will kiss it better for me?”

Familiar. It was an enormous relief.

In lieu of answering, however, Eddie asked, “So you saw the clown, too? The bird?”

Richie seemed dumbfounded. “Uh, yeah?”

Eddie put his supplies away, super casual, and said, “Guess you’re a virgin like the rest of us after all.”

Ben was the first to laugh, a sound like he had not actually expected to do so, while Richie’s previous expression sunk into further disbelief. Then he was grinning, and it made the joke worth it because Eddie never wanted to see that haunted expression on his friend’s face ever again.

“I’m saving myself for your mother!”

And it devolved further after that, the two of them going back and forth right up until the trap door opened again. In came Beverly, fresh-faced and happy after visiting with family that was not her father. At once, however, she noticed the unusually small number of boys in front of her as well as Richie’s disheveled state. He told her all about what had happened.

“We’ve got to tell Bill,” she said, unknowingly echoing Ben’s earlier statement. Her eyes were bright with fear and determination alike.

“Somehow, I really think we can beat It.”


	3. iii.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fuck Chapter Two’s flashback timing; in the book Richie is attacked by the statue much, much earlier so it is my power as a fanfiction writer to ignore the movie and do the fuck as I please
> 
> also warning for homophobic slurs in this chapter.

Eddie thinks he has really lucked out when an energetic, if eclectic song by David Bowie comes up next – _we can be heroes, just for – _but the station starts to dissolve the closer he gets to the Massachusetts border.

“No, no, no,” he mutters, reaching uselessly for the station buttons as the crackling interrupts Bowie’s determined lyrics until it finally cuts him off completely. With a noise of frustration, Eddie flicks the radio off, deciding he had enough anyway.

“Hey idiots, that song came out in ’77,” he scolds the darkened radio console. It does not defend itself.

The dash clock tells him it is 8:26. Apart from the quick stop at Burger King, he has been driving for over three hours.

And on he goes.

Even the Mass Pike is shockingly quiet at this hour, likely thanks to it being so early on a Saturday. He eyes the upcoming, massive rest area and gas station, wondering if he should at least stop for a coffee, before deciding to continue onward. Eddie is the sort of person who fills the tank at halfway to empty instead of risking it down to the wire like what he thinks is probably most of the population. But it works in his favor because he probably won’t need to fill up for a while yet, if he even does. He still has no idea where he is headed.

Maybe Boston? Why not? He could check out the city for the day. He had noticed a billboard earlier with a huge turtle on it advertising the New England Aquarium. He might enjoy seeing something like that. Maybe the point of this trip was that there _was no_ _destination_, and that he could go wherever the hell he pleased. He could admire the history and architecture that differentiated Boston from New York. He remembers Ben in the clubhouse, sitting with his books, and wonders how his friend might enjoy the sights.

Fuck. Eddie misses the Losers so much.

It’s strange, because he is not entirely sure how much he really remembered before his epiphany that morning. How much he had known when he stopped taking his useless “medication” three days prior. The idea that he could even forget any of them was ludicrous in the face of the sheer love pulsing through each and every memory he recollected along this trip.

Always getting a second ice cream cone for Richie. Throwing rocks at Henry Bowers with all the pent-up fury he could muster. Dancing with Bev in the clubhouse while singing _Come On, Eileen_ at the top of their lungs. Trying his hand at making a dam with Bill one day. Ben offering suggestions, Stan delegating tasks to get the thing built. How satisfying it had been to see that it had worked! How much more satisfying it had been to topple the whole thing down, kicking apart their hard work with crazy laughs. Richie pretending to be Godzilla the entire time.

A whole lot of “beep beep, Richie”. Eddie insisting that he hated being called “Eds,” but secretly kind of loving it.

Mike finally relaxing around them, swinging an arm over Bill’s shoulder as they laughed and walked home from another day at the quarry. Stanley stopping all six of the rest of them one day because a rare bird had landed in Mrs. Irving’s front yard bird bath and if “any of them so much as breathed with their mouths”, he would toss each of them into the sewers himself, one by one. Ben one time coming up with the idea to “accidentally” spill chocolate milk on Eddie’s shirt to hide the dried blood there after another nasty encounter with Bowers. It had saved him from being sent to the emergency room by his mother, who would have done so immediately, so fast his head would probably have spun.

Richie’s mixtape. The first time he had heard _Heroes_ by David Bowie and really listened.

Eddie has no idea how to get in touch with any of them. He remembers that Beverly moved out to be with her aunt in Portland, but who knows if she had stayed there. Stan was the next to move out of town, but Eddie couldn’t remember when. Ben next. Then finally, Eddie and his mother. It is hard for him to get his head wrapped around the idea of leaving Bill, Richie, and Mike behind after everything, but it was not as though he had much of a choice at seventeen.

Were the three of them still—

Wait, no. Of course not. Bill is a novelist now, all horror and shitty endings, and while Eddie has not read anything by him, he _knows_ of William Denbrough and the movie adaptations coming out in waves. Something about him marrying the female lead of one of said movies, a pretty woman with red hair. So, he must be happy, at least. And filthy rich.

Richie’s a stand-up comedian, or at the very least is a person trying to be funny at a microphone in front of a theater full of people. Eddie knows he caught one or two of his specials years before, lined up with two or three other comedians. But it was usually background noise as he folded laundry or marinated vegetables on the stove. Grimly, Eddie remembers not really enjoying the sets but could never put his finger on why.

Until now. It was what he was saying – it didn’t _sound _like the Richie he knew, or rather, the Richie he is starting to remember. Did he even write his own shit? Eddie likely caught onto the uncanniness of the behavior even before he realized he had known that person. He caught occasional glimpses of his forgotten friend but not his friend’s usual body language, not his usual enthusiasm. It used to bother Eddie something terrible without having any idea as to why.

Although, so damn _much _of Richie’s material when they were kids had been crude jokes involving Eddie’s mother, so maybe he really is just a shitty comedian.

Now Mike, Eddie has no idea where he wound up. Hopefully he left home, because it had been and probably still is such a narrow-minded piece of shit town. Mike deserved so much better than to be one of maybe six dark-skinned people there. _So _much better. Fuck that place, he ought to be happy, too.

But Eddie does not drive to Boston after all. Still cannot imagine where he _is _headed. He continues north on I-495 roughly an hour after he sullenly turned the radio off.

Half an hour later, he finally caves into the growing need for coffee and pulls into a combination Dunkin’ Donuts and Mobile station. The gas is overpriced as hell, being so close to the highway, and his tank is just below the halfway line, so he ignores the pumps and goes straight into the Dunkin’ side.

He grimaces when he sees there is a line. Not of many people, but he has been used to _zero_ people being on the road. Apparently, past ten on a Saturday morning is when the traffic starts to pick up and eat breakfast.

Instead of getting in line, he figures he may as well try to use the bathroom, even if the idea of a _rest stop bathroom _nearly has him turning right back around. _Especially_ after seeing it is a large shared space with the attached convenience store, lined with sad, dark blue stalls. He washes his hands before doing anything else, all the while reminding himself that he has enough Purell in his car to sink a fucking ship. One bathroom (probably) won’t kill him.

The place is clean enough anyway. There are some bizarre scuff marks here and there on the walls like someone either threw a sneaker at them or did that stupid parkour shit where people run up the wall and backflip or whatever. There is probably not enough room in here for something like that, but the marks confuse him all the same.

Eddie is reminded a little bit of the graffiti back home.

Those had not been mere scuff marks, however. The ones at the middle and high schools were disgustingly crude. Eddie had seen words that would have made his mother wash his mouth out with soap for _days_. Maybe literally.

There were huge boobs drawn in thick lines on the inside of the third stall by the science labs. There was stuff about disliked teachers, the football team, stuff about some of the cheerleaders. Occasionally there was a girl’s phone number that may or may not have been fake, but always informed Eddie that the number belonged to a “slut” offering a “good time”.

Bev told him once that the girls’ room had stuff that was way worse. That a lot of it had been about her. He remembers feeling so guilty for ever believing any of those stupid, awful rumors about her, spread only because she was different from the other bitch girls at school. Guilty, then furious at whoever would shittalk his friend like that.

But there was only one piece of graffiti he recalls actually getting under his skin in a _really _bad way. It wasn’t at the school. And it wasn’t even about him.

It was at the Capitol movie theater. Eddie, Richie, and Mike had gone there to see a movie that, like with Eddie and E.T., Richie had been somehow personally offended that Mike had not seen. He commandeered the boy’s following Saturday morning so they could watch it. Eddie had probably just been dragged along for the ride – although, remembering it now, he is starting to believe that he _had _actually wanted to go.

Because they were seeing _Batman!_ It was his second time, the first having been with Richie, Bill, Ben, and Beverly (the latter two being an unplanned but happy addition to the trio). It had been absolutely incredible. Batman on the silver screen. Batman come to life. Batman—

\--

“—versus Joker, Good versus Evil!” Richie continued to explain, exasperated. “What’s not to like about that?!”

Mike raised his hands in front of him defensively. He was trying very hard not to smile. “I just don’t get the whole suit thing.”

“He’s a _super hero!_”

“But why a bat?”

As they walked to the movie theater, Eddie started getting the impression that Mike knew way more than he let on. He _had _agreed to come, after all, so he must have some interest. He was going to have to buy his own tickets with his own, hard-earned money, because while Richie had invited them, he had not offered to buy anyone’s way in. Typical. But if Mike was willing to pay, Mike was interested in seeing the movie, surely.

At any rate, it was clear to Eddie that Mike was only playing dumb to get a rise out of Richie, and _gosh_ he was making it look so easy. The youngest watched his two friends go back and forth about the dark knight, a little jealous, but mostly in awe of the role reversal.

Someone was “getting a good one” on Richie for once. If only Stanley had been there to witness such a momentous occasion.

There was a long line to purchase tickets and the arcade in the lobby was just about packed. It was no real surprise, considering it was summer and Batman was the hottest blockbuster out right now. The whole building was air conditioned and snacks weren’t horrendously overpriced so it was a no brainer to spend hours at a time at the theater for one reason or another. Eddie saw quarters lining the screens of the arcade machines, keeping track of who was next among the shouting teens behind the fevered players at the joysticks.

By the time they reached the concession stand counter, they had about five minutes to get to the show. Mike ordered himself a soda and a box of Juicy Fruits while Richie and Eddie got a large popcorn to share. The trio buzzed with anticipation, turning on their heels toward the theater hallway.

“Tozier!”

Richie froze. All three of them looked back in horror as they realized Victor Criss, “Belch” Huggins, and Steve Sadler had made their way into the arcade. Victor’s stupid bleached hair was blinding in the light coming in from the windows while Belch’s face darkened the second his eyes found Mike. Steve – usually called “Moose” – was shaking his head and grinning manically, as if to say the three had made a grave mistake coming here.

Eddie looked back and forth between his friends’ faces, wondering what the hell to do. He expected Richie to shout back, but his friend was bizarrely silent. Henry Bowers not being with the trio was a small miracle, and one that likely attributed to there being no violence during the encounter.

Mike muttered something like “not worth it” and made to turn around just as Victor started shouting again.

“Wanna play some Street Fighter?”

What the hell was that supposed to mean? Were they serious?

But Belch and Moose started laughing at his side and to Eddie’s confusion, so did two or three of the people surrounding the game cabinets. They were looking at Richie like he had stepped in dog shit. Like they were grossed out by something.

Eddie opened his mouth to shout a profanity laden question their way, but the look on Richie’s face silenced him immediately. He looked terrified. And why wasn’t he saying anything for himself?

“Let’s go,” Mike said hurriedly. He had no idea what the joke was either, but clearly had no plans to stick around for the punchline. Richie managed to take a step back, but he still had that awful look on his face, the same one he had worn when he encountered the bird at the Ironworks, the same one he wore when Stanley had yelled at him when all he had been trying to do was talk about how courageous they all had been.

_(Stan did come around like Mike figured he would, and spoke easily about the incident by the time they were able to tell Bill the story. Eddie was kind of pissed at him, though, because as far as he knew he had never apologized to Richie for his outburst.)_

Eddie hated that look on Richie’s face. Really, deeply hated it.

“I’ve got a nice, big roll of quarters right here for you,” said Moose, taking his hand to cup under his crotch and pull up suggestively, similar to Henry’s gesture the day of the rock war. Richie’s eyes widened at the implication, so did Eddie’s. He was too shocked to say anything before they finally managed to retreat, wordlessly into the darkened hallway of the theater. The trio of bullies’ laughs echoed loud behind them.

What the fuck just happened?

Eddie was so glad Mike had been there with the two of them, because Eddie wanted to fucking scream. All he wanted to do was run back and kick Moose in the balls. Remind Victor and Belch just who had run away from rock-wielding Losers like little bitches. He probably (definitely) would have wound up with his ass kicked and fuckall to show for it, but it would have made him feel better. Maybe.

But Mike’s box of Juicy Fruits was at Eddie’s back as he forced him down the aisle to their seats, and Eddie could only shout-whisper in indignation at the whole disgusting display.

“Eddie, it’s fine,” Richie interrupted his tirade about half a minute in. Eddie gaped.

“It’s not ‘fine’! Am I the only one upset about this?”

“They’re assholes, fuck ‘em,” said Richie casually from his seat. Eddie blinked at him. Maybe… maybe it really hadn’t bothered him as much as Eddie thought. Maybe the look on his face wasn’t fear, but pure shock. Yeah, he was probably surprised to remember that fuckasses like Victor Criss shared the same breathing space as the rest of them. And Moose had been like, super gross. His dick was a roll of quarters? Sorry about your small dick then, shithead.

Eddie still bristled regardless. He sat down only because the previews had started, accepting the popcorn Richie passed to him without a word.

He was still thinking about what happened by the time the movie had actually started. The disgusted looks on peoples’ faces. The laughter. And what the hell did the video game have to do with any of it? Did Richie lose a game against them? The tension in the air suggested there was more to it than that. And Moose’s comment, what the fuck. What the _fuck_. As much as he wracked his brain, Eddie could not for the life of him figure out what the hell it all meant. What one thing had to do with the other.

However, something bothered him even more than what was said in the lobby.

Richie was a tactile person, always had his arms around someone else’s shoulders, gave occasional tickles as though they were still five years old or pinching his friends’ cheeks. It was always worse with Eddie. He was _always _in Eddie’s personal space. The last time they had been at the movie theater, Richie had excitedly been elbowing him any time something cool happened – which, because it was Batman, was very often.

Not this time, though. Eddie was unsure when he first noticed it, but it turned his stomach in a really awful way once he had.

Richie was sitting straight up in his chair, arms rigid in his lap instead of stealing Eddie’s armrest like usual. It was not typical Richie posture. He had not once reached over for the popcorn they were supposed to be sharing and never even looked whenever it was offered to him. It was a far cry from the boy who sat next to Eddie over a year ago, watching E.T. with his leg swung over the other’s. Any other time, he would practically poke, prod, pull Eddie at any given moment for any given reason.

But not now. He was stiff. It was fucking weird. Eddie spent more time watching Richie than he did the movie.

At one point, the boy must have forgotten himself because he leaned over, towards Eddie, and flopped his arm on the rest. Only Eddie’s had already occupied the space – normally not an issue, but the moment their skin touched Richie jerked back immediately, like someone had poured scolding hot water between them. He leaned away to the opposite armrest, looking sour. Not at Eddie. Not at Batman either. Any other time, Eddie would have sung grateful praises at not being the center of Richie’s touchie-feelie attention, but this… hurt. Somehow. It was deliberate and awful and what the _fuck _was happening.

Eddie started to wonder if _he _had done something wrong.

It was an irrational concern that had gripped him tightly all the same. Maybe it had nothing to do with Bowers’ dumbass friends. Maybe it was him. Had he done something? Said something? Undeserved guilt twisted his stomach into knots. He tried to think of anything he might have said to make Richie mad at him and came up short.

Fuck Victor, fuck Belch, fuck Moose. Fuck this movie. Panic was seizing his heart by the time Eddie quietly placed the bowl of popcorn on the floor and snuck past Mike through the aisle to leave the theater.

Rushing into the nearby bathroom, all Eddie could do was hold onto the sides of one of the sinks in a vice-grip. He heaved in huge, shaking breaths, willing the bile in his throat to stay there. He did not dare let go of the sink, not even for his inhaler. He was too afraid to let go, convinced he would just fall to the floor without something to balance him. He was dizzy. He hated this, he hated whatever had Richie acting so fucking strange, hated not knowing what Eddie may have done to cause it, he hated the arcade, and fucking Street Fighter, and—

There it was, on the wall to the right of the row of sinks. Eddie blinked, shakily let go of the sink and found himself walking, trancelike, toward the writing even as the nausea and dread trembled violently in his stomach. Fresh graffiti.

It said in big bold permanent marker, **DICK TOZIER ALWAYS HUNGRY FOR DICK**.

It said, **DIRTY FUCKING FAGGOT**.

It said, **CALL TOZIER FOR A FREE BLOWIE**.

Someone had drawn a huge dick to the right of the words and accompanied it with dozens of R-labeled hearts.

Eddie wanted to throw up. All he could do was stare, tears stinging in his eyes, as he read the words over and over and over again.

The dark, uncomfortable theater. Richie quiet. Richie cold and distant, like he barely inhabited his own body. Sitting stiff in his chair. Richie not looking at Eddie, not moving. Jerking away from contact as though his skin had burned.

Eddie was grabbing at the paper towel dispenser wildly before he even realized what he was doing. This was— people couldn’t see this. People couldn’t know this. They would use it against him, hurt him with it – just like they already fucking did in the lobby. Eddie must have pulled two whole yards of sheets before he ripped them from the dispenser, hurrying to the wall and wiping at the words.

It had no effect. He scrubbed harder, and harder, and harder to no avail but he kept trying, tears streaming down his face as the bold lettering resisted him, mocked him. Mocked Richie.

_Shut up!_ he pleaded wildly in his head. _You don’t know anything about him! _But he continued to scour the walls, and they continued to bare the offensive words.

A giggle arose from the sink.

Eddie whipped his head around, worried someone else had come in but finding no one. He was shaking. He felt crazy. Maybe he was hearing things—

The laughter sounded off again, tinkling against the porcelain. Not comprehending, Eddie looked at the sink behind him with wide eyes – it came from the drain. He was sure the noise came from the drain.

He was proven right moments later when the laughter echoed again, this time not stopping, becoming more and more unhinged as it continued. Eddie backed away from the sink slowly, only to turn his head and realize that the writing on the wall was changing before his very eyes.

In red, scribbled handwriting, Eddie’s name covered Richie’s. **EDDIE KASPBRAK ALWAYS HUNGRY FOR DICK**. **CALL EDDIE KASPBRAK FOR A FREE BLOWIE**. He watched, horrified, as the ‘R’s in the hearts became ‘E’s and the words **FAGGOT** and **FAIRY** and **FLAMER **suddenly covered the plaster. It was blood. It had to be blood, every single word that appeared. The words seemed to smear on the wall in time with his heartbeat, _boom boom boom_-ing wildly in his chest.

All too slowly, the bloody slurs began to morph into the word **F L O A T**

**F L O A T**

**f L O a T**

**f L o a T**

**f l o A t**

**F L O A T**

“Eddie?”

The boy screamed, turning around in an instant. The laughter from the drain silenced.

It was Mike. “Wanted to make sure you hadn’t fallen in.”

Sobs wracked through Eddie as he backed into the wall, sinking down to the floor involuntarily. The disgusting floor of that disgusting bathroom. But he didn’t fucking care, he couldn’t fucking help himself, and he couldn’t fucking stop crying. Mike was over in an instant, grabbing Eddie’s shoulders and assuring him that he was okay. He was okay. He was safe now.

The blood writing had disappeared, leaving the wall to expose Richie instead. Mike had noticed it now, his face twisting indescribably as he looked up and read the words.

“Don’t,” snapped Eddie breathlessly, nonsensically, “don’t look at him like that.”

Mike blinked back down to meet Eddie’s glare, clearly confused before it dawned on him how he may have come across. He shook his head. “I don’t care about that. It’s none of my business.” He frowned again. “Must have been Bowers’ friends. They must’ve come in here right after the movie started.”

Eddie let out another soft sob. “I tried to erase it. I-I tried, but it wasn’t working, and then the sink started laughing, blood started appearing on the walls, and it was that fucking clown, the clown was _here_ but It was— It was in the drain, It—”

“You tried to wipe the words off?”

“What— _yes, _I literally just told you—”

“With dry paper towels?”

Eddie blinked at the question.

Then— oh. Right. His face burned, humiliated. He had not even tried wetting the paper towels in the sink before attacking the wall. Fruitlessly. Really though, embarrassment was a welcome emotion after the raw terror he had felt before. He wiped at his face with still shaking hands. What a moron he was, jeez. But he had barely been able to think straight at all, had been running on sheer panic the moment he saw the words. Really, before that, when he noticed Richie’s behavior. And then the stupid clown made it worse.

He inhaled, exhaled a deep breath. “Guess so. I wasn’t even…”

Mike tilted his head. “Don’t you have rubbing alcohol? In that bag?”

“Uh, yeah.” There was a small, travel-sized bottle of it inside Eddie’s fanny pack, forgotten at his waist. Only for emergencies. This was a fucking emergency.

The other boy smiled. “Let’s get started then.”

The caped crusader continued to fight crime valiantly and with booming effort, but Mike and Eddie went unaware of his escapades as they went to work scrubbing isopropyl-soaked paper over the wall. Back and forth, back and forth. Eddie would normally have wished for gloves while handling so much of the chemical, but he didn’t care. Not even the acrid smell of the alcohol bothered him.

Because it was working.

Slowly but surely the letters smeared under their working hands. Mike was taller, so he was able to reach the crude drawing with ease, satisfied as the lines and hearts came away under his scrutiny. Eddie thought of Beverly’s bathroom and wished Stanley and Bill were here to help, too. The more he thought about it, however, the gladder he was that it was only two Losers wiping the walls of the Capitol theater bathroom. The fewer people who knew about this – any of this – the better.

The two boys backed up when they had finished to appreciate their hard work. The bathroom wall was cleaner than it had likely ever been, and there was no evidence of the hateful words that had marred the plaster ten minutes beforehand.

Relief was a palpable, warm feeling in the air. For once, Eddie was grateful for his frequent illnesses or common scrapes, because who the hell else would have disinfectant ready in the blink of an eye? Eddie’s breathing had long since returned to normal and he looked to Mike, resolutely willing tears to stay the hell away from his eyes.

“Thank you,” he said, voice small, but Mike clapped him on the shoulder and told him not to worry about it. Before he could think better of it, Eddie opted instead to wrap his arms around his friend, a full-on hug, holding on tight – and maybe just a second shy of how long it was probably appropriate to hug another boy in a public bathroom. But he didn’t give a shit. He was grateful.

They could hear the telltale signs of a theater emptying its patrons and realized that Batman had beaten the Joker and here they were in a disgusting bathroom, for no reason they could actually admit. Luckily, the two blended into the crowd once they left the boy’s room and it was a huge relief to discover that none of Bowers’ goonies were waiting for them in the lobby.

Richie, however, had been. He threw his arms in the air when he saw them.

“Where the hell have you two been? You missed the whole movie!”

“I had a date with your sister,” Eddie answered easily. Mike snorted at the remark, while Richie exaggeratedly rolled his eyes behind his glasses.

“Whatever.” He crossed his arms, a very Not Richie gesture, and Eddie felt like someone had punched him in the chest. Richie looked at Mike. “What’s your excuse?”

Mike, on the other hand, beamed with boyish delight. “Really had to take a shit.”

Richie let out a sound that was half-disgust, half-laughter, and some of the tension in his shoulders released. As they headed out of the cinema, Mike started describing his made-up feces in excruciating detail, earning several “eughs!” from Eddie and sharp laughter from Richie. The filthier Mike embellished his tale, the harder Richie howled, and by the time they got to the Barrens to meet up with the other Losers, the insults stayed back at the Capitol, locking up Richie’s features no longer.

He still avoided Eddie for the rest of the day.


	4. iv.

The memory burns inside of Eddie’s throat like barbed wire. Stings his eyes.

By sheer miracle, he keeps the car steady on the road and doggedly pushes the decades old hurt back down where it belongs. He keeps driving.

He has been driving a total of five hours at this point. Each interstate he had crossed onto had been another stretch on memory lane, each of them playing like colorful slideshows in his head. The sign announcing his departure from New Hampshire, welcoming him to Maine had been no surprise by the time he reached it. He laughs a little at how oblivious he had been when he first woke up that morning.

No shit he’s heading to Derry. Where the fuck else?

Eddie never belonged to New York City.

Derry refused to let him go. For nearly thirty fucking years, Eddie had lived a hollow life, allowed himself to slip unknowingly back into old patterns as Derry collected and warded off each and every one of his memories. All of his friends. His very identity, seized in the claws of his hometown and dangling before him like a shining bauble just out of reach.

There must be something he is still forgetting. Something huge, but he obviously has no idea what the hell it could be. Or maybe the town wants something from him, but what does he have? He has no idea how to answer these questions. All he can do is keep moving forward.

And what a funny notion that is. Moving forward. The words hang in his thoughts like foreign objects. Moving forward. A voice that sounds suspiciously like Richie’s spot-on surfer dude impression jeers in his mind, _you should try it sometime, man!_

As though moving forward was a hobby, like skiing, that he may have had some interest in if he had remembered that his only real illnesses were anxiety and hypochondria. _Just try it!_

He looks at his left hand, bereft of his wedding band for the seventh month in a row, and thinks of Myra.

What a loveless marriage it had been. Eddie had clung to it like a lifeline all this time, needing what he assumed to be normalcy because the alternative was absolutely terrifying. He is all too sure he never would have married her if he had remembered growing up in Derry. Remembered the Eddie who had stood up to his mother. The Eddie that chucked that his fanny pack and went down into those disgusting sewers to save his friend. The Eddie who got _puked on_ by a shapeshifting clown, for fuck’s sake, before kicking it in the fucking head. He grew up with a bunch of Losers – and they were the only ones who ever let him be the brave, hyperactive mess he truly was.

He swallows. Thinks that if he had remembered how courageous he could be, he would not have married a woman, either.

_Fuck_ Derry. It had taken everything from him and now, what, he’s just going back like nothing? Like it will welcome him back? None of his friends will still be there, they can’t be. They _left_. He did, too, but the other Losers actually managed to get the fuck _on _with their lives, while his was falling apart day by day.

Sure, Eddie has no idea what is still waiting for him back in Derry, but it’s not like New York City is really a choice anymore, either. Not really. And hey, he has already driven across five states, so he may as well keep _moving forward_.

The car in front of him has a bumper sticker shaped like a turtle. Inexplicably, in small, multi-colored Comic Sans, it tells him “don’t worry, be happy!”

He sneers at it. It might be time for more coffee.

\--

The kid who rings Eddie up for his shitty convenience store coffee has a stutter like Bill. It makes him smile, which probably freaks the kid out. Whatever. Eddie rubs at the mark on his cheek self consciously with his free hand as he walks back to the car.

If he’s calculating it correctly, he is about an hour and a half from Derry. There is no mistaking that is his destination now. In total, it will be a nearly eight hour journey.

Next time he follows some cosmic pull to parts unknown, he should follow it to a fucking airport instead. Jeez.

After filling up the tank, Eddie makes his way back onto I-295. Traffic has picked up now that it is so much later in the morning, but the road to Derry is not exactly Summer Vacation Central, so it is nothing too unbearable. He has found a few more radio stations not playing utter shit, so at least the next hour and a half won’t be in complete silence.

He makes it through six obnoxious commercials before he gives up and shuts the damn thing off anyway.

Somewhat at random, it occurs to him for the very first time that the thing beckoning him back to Derry may, in fact, be Pennywise the Dancing Clown.

The thought just about stops his heart. They—they were never really sure they had killed It. He remembers the way they beat the shit out of It, he remembers the clown’s face cracked before It fell away. How they were no longer afraid. But maybe It is the thing calling Eddie back, hoping to finish the job now that Eddie is old and boring and alone.

He swallows. Tightens his grip on the wheel and then relaxes. Forces himself to think about this rationally, like an old boring lonely adult, instead of a scared kid.

It… probably isn’t Pennywise. The clown’s schtick had always been to scare them half to death and It was never exactly _subtle_ about it. Ben told them all about how he had been lured through the library by _burning Easter eggs_ for crying out loud.

The closest brush with death and terror he had this morning was when some jackass in a pickup nearly crossed into the same lane as him at the same time. _Without_ signaling, so really, Eddie would not have been at fault, shithead, but since he isn’t a terrible driver, he merely swerved back into his original lane.

And honked a lot. And swore up a storm.

Regardless, it has yet to start raining blood or ooze. There have been no clowns or balloons. No gigantic birds. No lepers. He has not so much as sneezed all day. If the clown were at the bottom of this fun little road trip, hoping to feed off of his fear or whatever, It was doing a pretty piss poor job of terrifying Eddie out of his skin.

Really, though, Eddie does not think it is fear guiding him, even if he is unsure as to what else it could be.

He remembers the house on Neibolt. That place had terror in its very woodwork, peeling off of its walls like dead skin. He remembers the way the thing sagged, remembers the fence posts they later used as weaponry. How very strange it was that no adults seemed to ever even glance at the place, when really the building should have been condemned. He remembers barely leaving the place with his life - only to go back weeks later; the very definition of insanity.

_(or,_ _if at first you don’t succeed…)_

He remembers the leper much more clearly than he thinks is very fair. He remembers falling through the floor and breaking his arm, screaming as a fucking clown monster unfolded itself out of the refrigerator to terrorize him moments later. He remembers thinking he was about to be eaten alive. He _was _about to get eaten alive. He remembers Bill and Richie barely making it in time, remembers the other Losers piling into the kitchen. Remembers Richie re-setting his arm despite protests, what the _fuck_.

Remembers his mom screaming at them all afterward, on Bill’s front lawn. Eddie could not look any of them in the eye after, especially Beverly. He remembers the emergency room – or well, really he does not remember that, but he knows his mother kept him in the hospital two full days. It had been entirely unnecessary, but Eddie could not have cared less at the time. The painkillers had helped him sleep. Helped him stay asleep.

He remembers coming home. The first two nights, his mother stayed seated in a chair opposite his bed. On the rare occasion he actually managed to fall to sleep, nightmares were sure to wake him up, wake him screaming or crying. Both. His mother cried, too, because her little boy had never had night terrors before, and his “friends” _(she spat) _were terrible little monsters for including him, her delicate, weak baby boy, in whatever the hell they were getting up to.

Eddie remembers wanting to argue. Argue on behalf of his friends. Argue about his fragility. But he was just so _scared_.

He would close his eyes and hear Bill behind the locked door. But instead of shouting for Eddie’s safety, he was mocking him. He had locked the door himself. He had left Eddie behind because he was such a fucking coward, the Losers were better off without him. Stronger. Eddie would bang on the door and Bill would just taunt him. “Cry more, crybaby! Cry for Mommy!”

His nightmares saw Richie’s face, pleading to look at him, but his face would melt down to the bone as Eddie watched. He would tell Eddie to look at him, but his face would become the clown’s. He would tell him to look, but there was nothing there. Sometimes he would feel Richie holding him down, keeping him in place so the clown could feed all the more easily.

He would see—

\--

—teeth. Rows of them, not attached to anything but descending upon him regardless. They were huge, and Eddie was so small, so fucking small, and something like tar, dark and disgusting, was wrapping around him from toe to head, and he couldn’t move, couldn’t escape, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t—

Eddie awoke with a start, looking up at the speckled ceiling above his bed. He didn’t even scream, barely reacted, as though the nightmares were as inevitable as the sunrise. Old hat. Taking an entire minute to just breathe quietly, Eddie resigned himself to yet another night watching his closet door like a hawk, keeping an eye on the windows, taking note of any moving shadows in the hallway light peeking under his door.

It was the seventh night after their ill-fated adventure to the house on Neibolt Street. No one had come to see him, not at the hospital and not while at home. The only positive thing that had happened to him all week was that his mother stopped staying in his room all night. Which was good, because that had been a little fucking creepy, but bad because that meant he was alone.

Music was the only thing that helped. Just a little.

He owned a few cassette tapes of various albums and artists that he had listened to on repeat, cutting through the terrifying silence that permeated the room otherwise. He hated how long it took to rewind them when he had gotten through the B-sides, but mostly the music was a constant. It soothed his shaking fingers. Slowed his rabbit heart. Or sometimes, it didn’t, but it was still a better alternative than hearing every creak of the house and thinking it was sick, terrifying laughter in the dark.

Richie had made him a mixtape just before school ended. A lifetime ago. Eddie listened to that the most. His mother probably had no idea why a cassette player quietly playing any Guns N’ Roses songs could be considered “calming”, but it helped Eddie all the same.

He looked over to the player and frowned, before leaning over to where it sat on his nightstand. Time to rewind. The whole process was a total bitch with his stupid cast on.

TOTO had just begun singing about Africa when there was a _thwap_ noise on the window closest to his bed. He stiffened, a scream trapped in his throat, and watched the glass with wide, terrified eyes.

He caught sight of a rock just after it _thwap’_ed against the window once again. He still stared, because _what?_ Before too long, another stone hit the glass and he bolted out of bed to see what the hell was going on.

It was Richie. Eddie could see he had three more small stones in his hand and was rearing up to chuck another one. Eddie yanked the window open with a graceless shove.

He leaned out into the open air, shout-whispering, “What the fuck are you doing?”

The rock fell to the ground. Well, good. It would have been really shitty if Richie had still thrown one straight into his face. The other boy waved at him, like they were meeting up for ice cream or something.

“Hey, let me in!”

“Are you insane?! You do realize how easily you could have just broken my window, right? If there’s one thing I don’t fucking need right now it’s glass all over my bedroom floor.”

“I was throwing like, pebbles, calm down!”

“It has nothing to do with size, genius, it’s the force of the throw!”

Richie’s arms flew up. “Oh my god, I’m sorry for totally not trying to break your shitty window. Now will you please let me in?”

Uncomprehending, Eddie continued to stare out his window. What did he mean “let him in”? Why the hell was Richie here at one in the morning ordering him around? Before he could say anything else, Richie answered one of those questions.

“Dude, your mom won’t let any of us see you. She just yells at us. Bev doesn’t even want to try ‘cause your mom was such a grade A bitch to her. Not even Stan, and like, who the fuck ever has to worry about Stanley Uris doing something wrong?”

Eddie barely heard him bring up his other friends, because his mind was focusing so much on that first part. His mother… wouldn’t let his friends inside the house? She wouldn’t let them visit?

The entire time, he thought maybe they had decided to cut their losses and leave Eddie behind. That they were better off without him. That they had abandoned him. That maybe the Bill who sometimes plagued his dreams was the real one, mocking and cruel.

A wave of anger, the likes of which he had never felt before, surged through his entire body. He always heard of the expression “seeing red” and never really understood it until then. How could she— how dare she keep his friends away from him? How dare she keep him alone like this, thinking he had no friends left, thinking that maybe that stupid clown would come to kill him and no one would actually be there to save him this time. How _dare_ she?

“Eddie, c’mon. Let down your hair, or whatever,” spoke Richie, breaking through the reverie. Eddie took a deep breath to calm himself, then took another. One more.

“If my mom hears me leave my room, she’ll never let me outside again.”

Richie groaned – it was kinda loud. Small miracle that no one heard either of them. “What am I supposed to do? Climb up to your window?”

Eddie looked down. He was on the second story and the only thing below him was the lawn _(freshly cut, don’t play in it!)_. There was no way Richie could get up the house, unless he had magically turned into Peter Parker without Eddie knowing. It was his turn to groan.

“Okay, fine. Fine, I’ll—I’ll sneak downstairs and open the front door for you.” Or he would try, anyway. He looked behind him to his door, at the hall light that seeped underneath, then turned back to Richie. “If I’m not down there in five minutes, get out of here.”

“Okay! Good luck, Eds!”

It was so jovial, as if the last time they had seen each other, it hadn’t been in a dilapidated house with a supernatural killer clown terrorizing them. Eddie shut the window behind him and creeped to his bedroom door, pressing his ear against it. She had to be asleep at this hour, but her door would be wide open, just in case her little Eddie Bear needed her in the middle of the night. He had to convince her to eventually let him keep his door shut, because seeing the entirety of the hallway was just too much for his active imagination. Every distant, dark shape could have been a threat.

Now the hall light was on at all times. He wasn’t sure if that would make this easier or harder, but there was only one way to find out. He clutched his doorknob, hesitating for just a moment, then slowly pulled the door open.

The hallway was, of course, empty. The bathroom was to his left in the center of the hall, while his mother’s room was straight ahead. Blue-tinted lighting flickered on and off upon the walls of her bedroom and Eddie realized she must have fallen asleep watching TV. Or was still awake watching TV. Shit. But the noise would help either way, and with another deep breath to steel himself, he tiptoed out of his room towards the staircase.

Just about everything was carpeted. _Safer_, his mother had insisted, and Eddie was never quite sure how, but it worked in his favor. His already light footsteps made not a sound as he crept to the stairs. He managed to get all the—

_Crrrrreak_.

Oh, come the fuck on. Third stair from the floor, really? Fuckfuckfuck. Richie was gonna get him grounded for life. He waited on the step, holding his breath, for what felt like an eternity.

No movement from the room at the top of the stairs. He could only hear the TV – louder than his music by a long shot. He skipped the next two steps and made it easily to the front door. When he opened it, Richie looked genuinely surprised.

“Hey, you’re alive.”

Something about the statement caught him, maybe because he had not seen a single person other than his mother in nearly a week. Maybe because he would not have been alive if Bill and Richie made it to the kitchen in the Neibolt house any later. Whatever the reason, Eddie could not help but surge forward and wrap his arms around his friend. He did not cry. He was so sick of crying. Maybe he was finally all dried up.

Richie let out a sound like “whoa” but hugged him back afterward, quietly. It was somewhat awkward with Eddie’s stupid cast, but it was warm, safe. Probably one of the best hugs Eddie ever had. Not that he was keeping track of that sort of thing, but if he was, this would be pretty damn close to the top.

He pulled away after what may have been too long, ignoring the burning of his throat and looking at the collar of Richie’s shirt because it was too difficult to look him in the face.

“My mom really turned everyone away?”

“Well, I dunno about Bill,” Richie said, venom on the name, “but just about everyone else told me they tried to come. Mike said she just slammed the door in his face before he could even say anything. Three guesses why.”

Eddie winced. He had no idea what to say to that.

“… C’mon. Don’t make a fucking sound, I swear to god, or I will murder you myself.”

Richie waved his hand, as though he were not a frequent victim of word vomit. “Got it, got it.”

“And skip the third stair up.”

Up they went, quietly. Eddie paused at the top of the stairs, just to make sure, but they were really in the clear. He never realized that his mother slept so soundly. Jeez. Would she even hear him if he had ever really cried for help?

Richie hopped up on Eddie’s bed without a word as the smaller boy slowly shut the door. He wished, not really for the first time, that the lock on the door worked. “But Eddie, you could get trapped in there,” his mother had explained after she had purposefully broken the mechanism. “What if you have an asthma attack and can’t get to the door?”

He dug the heel of his good hand against his forehead for a moment. Had he noticed any of this shit before? Noticed how utterly fucked up it was? How could he not have, all this time? He dropped back onto his bed next to Richie like a dead weight, laying on his back.

Eventually, Richie tilted his head down to look at him. “Sooo, how’s the arm?”

Eddie glared. “Better after _professionals_ saw to it.”

“I maintain you woulda been worse off if I hadn’t done anything,” Richie argued, flopping backwards to mirror Eddie.

“I maintain that you’re a fucking idiot.”

Richie grinned at him. It looked funny now that they were lying down. Eddie rolled on his side to see him better and was surprised when Richie did the same. His cast arm rested limply between them. It was quiet for a moment, save for the music.

“Why are you here, Rich?”

“Uhhh,” the boy looked at Eddie like he had grown six heads. “To see you? Figured that one was a no brainer, Eds.”

“I mean, why now? It’s one in the morning.”

He shrugged the shoulder he wasn’t laying on, but his eyes had flicked elsewhere. Impossible not to see with those Coke bottles he called glasses. “Your mom’d be asleep. And no one would see me or anything. Safe bet I could get in.”

By the time Richie finally glanced back up, confused by the silence, he realized that he was on the wrong side of a particularly angry look from Eddie. He flipped a hand into the air. “What?”

“Bull shit.”

“What? How?!”

“I dunno, you tell me! You’re a shitty liar.”

“I’m not lying, dumbass, obviously none of us can see you in the middle of the day.”

“Sure, fine, but you—” Eddie paused. This was so frustrating. He knew his friend was hiding something. He could not imagine why Richie refused to be straight with him. “I will drop you out of my window if you don’t tell me why you’re really here.”

“You’re such an asshole.”

“Takes one to know one.”

“Uggghhh, all right, fine,” Richie groaned, exasperated. He looked miserable. “I can’t fucking sleep. I mean, like all week. I’ve barely gotten any sleep since that stupid house. I just get too— I keep seeing half of Betty Ripsom and she just keeps screaming at me.”

Eddie was quiet for a moment before nodding a little. “Yeah, same here. All I see is that monster. Or the leper. Or— just, all sorts of nasty shit over and over again and I swear to god I’m convinced the clown is gonna come here any second to finish the job.”

_I keep seeing you,_ he wanted to say. _Or sometimes I can’t, and that’s worse. Sometimes It kills you instead._ But the words caught in his throat. And here he was accusing Richie of hiding things.

Richie snorted. He still seemed tense. “No shit, right? I jump at everything, it’s pathetic.”

Considering they had almost died, Eddie didn’t really think it was _that _pathetic. Instead of expanding upon his own nightmares, he asked Richie what he had seen upstairs. He knew what everyone else had seen the clown become before (lepers, burning hands, Georgie), but it was at that moment he realized he had no idea what Richie might have seen. Maybe the bird from the Ironworks again? It hadn’t really sounded like Richie was ever afraid of birds, though, from the way he had talked about it.

So, Richie told him. He told him about getting separated from Bill, too. Told him about the room full of clowns and the casket. The doll crawling with maggots. Told him about how the real clown suddenly appeared.

“He actually fucking said, ‘beep beep, Richie.’ Asshole.”

He told him about the three labeled doors, about Betty Ripsom’s suspended upper half. He told him that he’d seen _him_ – Eddie – pop out of a decrepit mattress, vomiting horrid black ooze from his mouth and laughing. Begrudgingly, he explained how Bill got him to realize that it was fake, all of it, and Eddie stopped him there.

“Why do you keep doing that?”

“Doing what?”

“Talking about Bill like he’s the worst person in the world,” Eddie explained. Because Richie _was _doing that. First outside the front door, then a few times during his retelling.

Richie looked flabbergasted. “Because he is? Because he’s a psychopath who nearly got you killed?”

“Well—”

“How are _you _not upset with him?”

Eddie didn’t answer for a moment, thinking about it.

“Because it’s Bill,” he said at last, to Richie’s absolute frustration. It had Eddie backpedalling, “Well—I mean, I’m not _not _mad at him, you know? I broke my fucking arm and had a clown monster drooling in my face. But… I dunno. It’s Bill.”

Richie still looked unimpressed with his answer, but Eddie really could not explain it any better. He had some notion that Richie actually did understand how he felt, but was too mad at Bill – too _determined _to be mad at Bill - to admit it.

Eddie tried to change the subject. “Is Ben okay? He got hurt, too, right?”

“Yeah,” Richie replied, picking distractedly at Eddie’s sheets. He suddenly grinned. “He didn’t have Dr. K to patch him up, but he lived.”

Eddie made a show of rolling his eyes, but he was smiling, too.

It was silent after that, but Eddie found that he hardly cared. In fact, he was pretty sure this was the calmest he had been since going to the house. Certainly, it was the happiest. Fears of things lurking outside the hall, inside the closet drifted away. He thought for sure he could finally fall asleep like this, listening to Richie’s quiet breathing. It was so relaxing. Eddie kind of wanted him to stay forever, quiet and safe like this.

“Is this my mixtape?”

Of course, the Trashmouth just had to ruin it. How foolish it was to expect him to stay quiet for more than two minutes.

Eddie looked literally anywhere else but at Richie’s face. “… Yes.”

“Oh my god, you cute little nerd,” Richie laughed. Because of the stupid cast, Eddie couldn’t react quickly enough to stop the other boy from reaching over to pinch his face, but he swatted at him afterward all the same.

“Shut up, asshole,” he replied. “I can’t stand how quiet it is without it, like I hear every fucking sound in the house and it’s the only way I can fall asleep.”

…

Oh, shit. Richie’s grin was getting wider every second as Eddie realized exactly what he just said.

“You fall asleep listening to my mixtape?”

“It’s not the only thing I listen to! It just _happened _to be the next tape, okay, and—”

“Shall I serenade you?” Richie asked brightly, like it was the best idea he ever had. Eddie shoved him.

“I said they help me sleep, not give me _nightmares_, dipshit.”

Richie was reaching for him, unphased by Eddie slapping at him with his good hand. They roughhoused a little more, and all the while Richie badly sung to the music, calling Eddie a “sweet child of miiiiine.” He only stopped, cackling breathlessly, when the smaller boy threatened to smother him with a pillow if he kept going.

“Ahh,” he sighed, “how cute. I never knew you were such a romantic, Eds.”

His face felt hot. Everything felt hot. “I hate you so much.”

“The evidence suggests otherwise, my dear Watson!”

“Yeah, you wish.”

Richie shoved his shoulder lightly, still smirking, but his glasses gave him away for a second time. His eyes fell away too soon. Their downcast gaze made the smirk look more like a grimace, like Richie had been hurt somehow but chose to grin and bear it. The expression was unlikely to have looked any different to anyone else, but Eddie’s throat burned when he noticed.

It made him think of the graffiti on the Capitol bathroom wall.

He remembered the way Richie had avoided him the rest of the day. Barely looked at him. Never touched him. How much Eddie had taken it for granted when such a thing was denied him. How badly Eddie had ached for it.

_Tell me_, he thought wildly. He wanted to reach out for Richie’s hand but felt paralyzed. His heart was pounding in his chest so loudly he was honestly shocked the other boy did not hear it. _Please tell me. Tell me everything. This is real. I can’t just be imagining this. But you have to tell me. Please. Trust me with this. Please trust me. I need to hear it from you. Tell me. Tell me, and maybe I can be strong enough to tell you, too._

He couldn’t say a single word. Richie was silent, as well.

The pair did fall asleep following a few other idle conversations that rose and fell away. There were no dreams, but there were no nightmares, either.

By some incredible miracle, Sonia Kaspbrak only opened the bedroom door in the morning just enough to spy Eddie’s prone form. Once she spotted him, she would not dare risk the door making any noise, risk waking him up now that he had fallen asleep at last. He was laying sideways on the bed, not even under the covers, but he looked so peaceful. He looked _so _much better than he had all week, especially those first terrible nights. She shut the door and started getting ready for work guilt-free.

Richie left some time after she did.

Later that day, Greta Keene would tell Eddie Kaspbrak that his pills were bull shit placebos. Sugar pills. That her dad filled his inhaler prescription with water and camphor. She would “sign” his cast while chewing bubble gum practically in his ears.

Beverly would be kidnapped. Eddie would yell at his mother for the lies and for pushing away his friends. He would throw his fanny pack as hard as he could when they reached the steps of the house on Neibolt Street.

And then the Losers would beat the ever loving shit out of Pennywise the Dancing Clown.


	5. v.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you made it this far, thank you for reading, truly. ♥ let me know what you think!
> 
> i do have other Reddie fics now (though one of them is very sad and the other is shameless smut :O) so if you’d like to, please check those out after finishing up here!

_Welcome to Derry!_

_Population: Your Stolen Hopes and Dreams!_

The sign does not actually say that. Eddie thinks it might as well.

He idles his car off the side of the road in front of the sign, hesitating for the first time since he left eight hours ago. The _pull_ is still there, beckoning him to somewhere specific, he guesses, but his nerves have him rooted in place.

What will he find there? Will he like what he finds?

Only one way to find out, he supposes. Groaning, he adjusts his rear-view mirror a little, mostly to have something to do that does not involve actually getting back on the road. He notes his reflection and is surprised to find he looks pretty good for a guy who just spent half the day driving through something like ten different interstates.

He rubs at the scar on his cheek for probably the fifth time today and takes a deep breath to steady himself.

It’s not like he can really turn around and go back. And he does not think he really wants to. Because what a fucking hassle, an eight-hour-long hassle that would be.

Eddie returns to the road without issue, there being no traffic in or out of Derry. He crosses a bridge over the same river he used to dive into, half-naked and laughing, and smiles, just a little.

There are so many _banks_.

Were there always this many banks? Were they boring adult buildings that eluded his childhood eyes? There are a few insurance places dotting the street as well. There is an antique store, which is a business he remembers, but fuck if he knows the name of the family who used to own the place. Maybe they still do. At a stop light he sees a sign pointing him toward the middle and high schools, so unfortunately close together, but decides it’s really not worth exploring. His best memories are not in the Derry Middle School hallway, nor Derry High School’s.

They are in the Barrens. They are at the quarry. They are in the alley next to the butchers, still in business when Eddie pulls his car to a stop in front of the store. Mr. Keene’s pharmacy is just a few buildings down. He thinks of Ben, meeting and patching him up without question. He thinks of Bev, helping them steal the supplies to do so.

God, what a crazy summer that had been, even without the demonic clown monster. From space.

It’s crazy to think Mike made deliveries to the butcher’s all the time. Eddie wonders where he was on the day Bowers started carving into Ben’s stomach, if maybe he would have fallen in with them sooner if he had been around. Not that Eddie really regrets how they met him. Screaming rock wars are a beautiful way to start an everlasting friendship.

Did Mike leave Derry? Eddie doesn’t know that, either.

He is absolutely shocked when he sees the Capitol closed down and abandoned.

“No fucking way,” he says as he climbs out of his car to get a better look. The front doors are covered in stained brown newspapers, save for one single area where it looks like the glass has been punched in and left alone. He uses it to peek, shaking his head at the dead arcade machines he sees. The desolate ticket counter. He never would have imagined the place would go out of business with the frequent traffic it got when he was a kid.

Just another Derry tragedy, he figures. He drives on.

He takes a detour in spite of the incessant tugging around his heart to see his old neighborhood, old house. He remembers biking up and down the blocks, helmet, pads, and – for far too long – training wheels, because it was all his mother had let him do before that day in sixth grade. He is kind of bummed when he discovers that his house really does not look all that different than when he had lived there, aside from the vibrant flowers underneath each front window. They never had real flowers when he was growing up, thanks to his allergies.

Such bull shit.

A neighborhood away, Richie’s old house has two kids playing in the front yard. As a mysterious, forty-something year old man, Eddie thinks it is probably better not to spend too much time scoping the place out. Bill’s old house is for sale, so is Stanley’s. He debates getting out to take a better look – they never really went over Stan’s place very much – but he decides against it. He can’t remember where Ben’s house was, but he doesn’t think it is nearby anyway.

Bev’s apartment complex is abandoned. Eddie avoids it, can think only of a bloody bathroom while looking at it.

At the corner of Turner Street, he is pleased to see that the bright yellow church is still there, holding services that evening. He remembers a few occasions where he sat on the curb of the sidewalk outside, pretending to read but really just listening to the vibrant music. It was beautiful. And the singers were so passionate. His mother would have killed him if she knew. Really, it would have been the least of her concerns if she knew about all of the things her son really got up to.

The sight of the church is almost enough to distract Eddie. But not quite. He is terrified. He is terrified when he realizes that the pull, the one that had more or less dragged him out of bed and across five states, is urging him down Neibolt Street.

Has it been the clown after all?

Eddie drives over and parks across from the church, decides it would be better to head over on foot. Anything to delay the inevitable. The street is as quiet as he remembers and does absolutely nothing to soothe his nerves.

He is shocked to see that the house is gone.

His pace quickens, disbelief carrying him to where the house once stood. It really is gone. As though it up and vanished. Maybe it did. There is a clear outline in the yard where grass does not grow and it is a picture-perfect footprint of the once sagging house that terrified him as a child. Even the gnarly tree that stood out front is gone. The fence has also been torn down, replaced by a lone, forlorn sign that tells him the land is for sale.

Good fucking luck.

The additions to the yard are what have Eddie’s heart beating somewhere in his throat.

There are two smooth stones sitting on the ground in front of where the house’s front porch used to stand imposing. Trinkets that Eddie can barely contextualize lay in front of them. They are memorials more than they are tombstones, but each one is engraved regardless.

One reads Stanley Uris.

The other reads Eddie Kaspbrak.

The date on his stone matches today’s date – only a year before, exactly. Stan’s reads two days prior. Both tell him, “The thing about being a Loser is that you don’t have anything to lose.”

The man does not fall to the ground but it is a damn near thing.

Eddie feels lightheaded. What is in front of him cannot be true— obviously cannot be true. He is here, he is breathing. He has been in New York for the entire past year, got a divorce, moved into his own place. He still worked at his job. He— this is not like that one fucking movie, where the guy doesn’t realize that no one’s talking to him because he was dead all along, it’s _not_. Eddie had ordered a breakfast sandwich from a fast food restaurant that very morning, for fuck’s sake. He is _real_.

He looks over to Stan’s stone. It has his stomach twisting even more. How could he not know? How could he not know that one of his best friends had died?

Blinking past the tears in his eyes, he reaches down with shaking hands to pick up one of the trinkets lying in front of Stan’s memorial. It is a small bird statue carved out of iron, cold and heavy in his grip. There are other bird figurines of varying shapes and sizes lined up on the ground in front of the stone and he returns their iron brother to them. There are four birds in all.

Eddie looks at his own. Lets out something like a sob, something like a laugh.

There is a travel-sized bottle of rubbing alcohol in front of his stone. There is a clear plastic container filled with rolled up medical tape. A crisp, new fanny pack with a note that reads, in what Eddie is unmistakably sure is Bev’s handwriting, “These are coming back in style!” And finally, an old, scuffed inhaler that the man recognizes is the backup he used to have at Bill’s place, so long ago.

The street is silent as Eddie cries, clutching the inhaler like a lifeline. He has no idea what is happening. He has no idea how he died – if he died. He has no idea what brought him back if he did, no idea what brought him to Derry. No idea why it waited for so long.

But seeing these items, he knows for sure just how much his fellow Losers loved him. Loved Stanley. He cries for his lost friend, wondering why he has not been called to Derry as well. Wondering if maybe he was on his way – from Atlanta, he thinks, and has no idea how he knows that.

After some time, Eddie sets the old inhaler back down on the dead grass. There are four items displayed at each of their memorials.

Someone’s tribute is missing.

As if on cue, Eddie hears a car door shut somewhere behind him. Fear has him doubting, has him hesitating again, has him wishing he could run. Hide.

His remembered courage gets him to his feet. Turns him around anyway.

The huge glasses are a dead giveaway.

The man walking towards where the well house once stood has his head down. He is tall, so tall, and his hair is a mess of black curls cut short around his neck. He has stubble lining his face. He is holding a small blue jay figurine in one hand and a box of Disney Princess band-aids in the other. It looks as though he is muttering something to himself, but Eddie cannot hear what.

He freezes when he steps onto the lawn, finally looking up. Stares at Eddie, eyes flitting up and down his form like he can’t comprehend what he’s seeing. He screws his eyes shut for a moment, like it—like _he_ will go away. Terrified that he actually will. Opens them again and looks indescribable.

The expression is all too familiar to Eddie. He still hates that look. That hurt, haunted face that he has seen on his friend more times than he would like.

Richie makes a noise. A whimper. Like he’s trying to talk around glass. His hand flies up to his mouth to trap another sob, dropping the box of band-aids he was holding without noticing.

“Eds?”

  


  


  



End file.
